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May 29th, 2015

It’s become evident that we don’t have the time or resources the site needs to maintain our own internal standards, or to re-invent the site to fully cater for the way our audience consumes content in 2015.

It’s been a difficult last year for the site. The effect of magazines picking up our contributors has been too big of a brain-drain for us to bounce back from. Over the past seven years, former Thrash Hits contributors have left us to take up editorial positions at Metal Hammer, Terrorizer and Rock Sound, and prop up the features team over at Kerrang! Magazine.

On the one hand that does make us #SoProud of our boys, but nurturing writers from green newbies to the kind of talent that magazines are looking to poach is a long and difficult process. As much as we might pretend otherwise, there is hard graft involved from both writer and editor in stamping out the clichés, bad ideas, and shitty rhetoric from submissions. When our last callout for contributors garnered just one viable prospect from over 40 submissions, we knew we had reached a breaking point in desire to start that process again.

Also, our site is just not setup to handle content in the way that readers in 2015 should expect. It still pains us to see other, larger organisations dumping content online with little thought to the medium they’re working in or the audience they’re speaking to – a website is not just a magazine you read on a computer. It’s 2015 and the industry is still still trying to sell the idea of an Online Exclusive. Embedded YouTube videos are cool but… Yeah. We’d like to think we never treated you with that level of contempt.

It just goes to highlight the sheer scale of resources needed to get the site fighting fit again. We have so many, many ideas, but we have had to hold our hands up and admit that Thrash Hits is no longer the best place to try them. Perhaps we’re no longer the people to do that. Perhaps we just don’t care enough about it any more. Perhaps now is the time to bow out.

It’s been a good seven years. We’ve written some cool stuff – some really cool stuff – and it’ll all always be here, for better or for worse. We’ve made some lifelong friends and we’ve made sure we made enemies with the kind of people that deserve it. The landscape of rock music has changed beyond all recognition in that time. It’s been a pleasure to see bands we love rise up, and disappointing to see bands that we knew could’ve been so much more just splutter out.

We’d like to think that Thrash Hits has left the rock world a better place, but the truth is everything’s just as shady as ever.

Magazines are still putting over hogwash like King 810 for fear of getting the ire of the managerial behemoth they share with the likes of Slipknot.

No-one in the media seemingly bats an eyelid at the conflict of interest caused by the presenter of the Radio 1 Rock Show is also the head of A&R for a record label subsidiary setup as a co-collaboration between a major label and the management company behind 50 per cent of the bands you’ve seen on the cover of UK mags for the last half-decade.

You’re still a fucking clown if you think Rammstein’s stage show is in any way comparable to morons honking at the lack of causal sexism and breast exposure on the big screen at Download Festival.

Bands still get kicked out of official end of year lists because their fat lump of a frontman said something racist once the tape stopped after an interview.

Jared Leto is still a terrible, terrible musician, and he remains the only person ever to threaten us with legal action.

Magazines still change the review scores of albums because of how labels distribute their advertising budgets and how marketing departments allocate media exclusives.

You’re still a tickbox chump if you think Refused’s comeback doesn’t shit all over their entire legacy.

And The Blackout are still wankers in a shit band, even if they did eventually split up.

May 20th, 2015

With their excellent debut albumRescue, Samoans captivated us with a fresh combination of dreamy vocals, soothing guitar melodies and occasional bursts of raw energy. Just off the back of their recent headline UK tour, we caught up with drummer Chris Rouse to find out more about the band, and to find out – among other things – what happens when you get caught doing the no-trousers-boogie at one of their shows.

May 7th, 2015

“Co-headlining tours” are just a thing booking agents set up to stop bands’ respective managers throwing a hissy fit over where their charges are in the running order, right? The most recent players of this deadly game of brinkmanship are Cancer Bats and While She Sleeps. We sent Josh Grahamalong to the Glasgow leg of the tour toscope out which band came out on top.

6 things we learnt while watching Cancer Bats and While She Sleeps in Glasgow:

May 1st, 2015

Eschewing the diet of nothing bu tired, reskinned deathcore breakdowns that’s been the binge-diet of so much of the UK’s underscene, Sunderland five-piece Nexilva balance their death metal brawn with some old-skool Bleeding Through-esque ambient synths and guitar tricks. That makes them an interesting proposition for those who prefer a cerebral edge to their m0sh, and was more than enough reason for our man Josh Graham to call up their drummer Connor Jobes to get the skinny.

April 21st, 2015

The sun is out, the sun is shining, but we’re not slumming it in parks listening to terrible summer music just yet. Oh no. Some of us are making sure the beard-stroking, mind-expanding sphere that is Prog isn’t going unattended – step forward David Keevill, who returns with his latest column examining what the big stories and events in the world of Prog have been over the last few weeks…

All we can offer is a gallery of awesome photos by our man in Brighton, Mike Burnell, who was on hand to snap the band when their recent UK tour hit his town. You can check out his gallery of shots right after the jump.

March 26th, 2015

The Answer are one of those bands we’re just glad exists. Sure, sure, they aren’t exactly breaking any molds with their respectfully-retro brand of heavy rock, but they most definitely do it was a damn sight more panache than 99% of the naff revivalist bands we’ve sat through over the last seven years. They’re currently out on the road to tour their latest album, Raise A Little Hell, and they’ve brought The Picturebooks and Bad Touch along with them.

Naturally, our man in Brighton, Mike Burnell was down for the whole shebang to get lots of photos of the whole lot of them when they turned up to play a show in his town earlier this week. Check the whole damn gallery out after the jump.

March 17th, 2015

Given that Doom Metal (or should that be DOOM METAL ? It feels like it has earned the right to be in ALL-CAPS) has pretty much more right than any other subgenre to claim it is the “original” form of heavy metal, it seemed kind of remiss that we didn’t have a column dedicated specifically to it. Until now – step forward, Pete Long….